Referral Fees

[George]

Terry,
I am not sure if I should write to the listserv since I am not a PTG 
member.  I agree to some sort of referral fee for any recommendation.
About 30 years ago, when I was a beginner, one of my costumer wanted to do 
some major repairs on his piano refinishing included.  Since I am not a 
furniture refinisher, I recommended my costumer to a colleague of mine who 
had a complete refinishing section in his piano shop. ( For information 
purposes he was a piano rebuilder with a complete shop).  When he returned 
the piano to my costumer with a very beautiful piano a got paid he said he 
could have done both his job and mine for the refinishing job.
That was two recommendation to this fellow from; the first and last.
I thought I mention this to all sincere technicians to be on the lookout 
when referring someone.
George Takats
retired technician

At 06:32 PM 2/7/01 -0500, you wrote:
>This post is related to Howard's recent post. Some techs like a lot of shop
>work and some don't. Some tune almost exclusively. They obviously run into
>many pianos that could use major regulation, action rebuilding, bridge
>repairs, restringing, rebuilding, etc.
>
>If a tech called me up and said that he/she had a customer with a piano that
>needs bridge work, restringing and a new pinblock - let's just say $3,000
>worth of work - it would seem appropriate to me to work out some type of
>referral fee for this type of work. I get what I want (shop work), the other
>tech gets a happy customer and a better piano to tune.
>
>I would think a referral fee would entice those non-shop oriented techs into
>pursuing these types of arrangements. Does anyone have any experience with
>this type of thing. I just did a bridge repair for another tech and gave him
>10% of the job fee. Any thoughts?
>
>Terry Farrell
>Piano Tuning & Service
>Tampa, Florida
>mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com